Summary

The South Korean Local Election Panel Study of 2010 examined vote determinants of Korean voters and the causes and dynamics of changes in voter preferences. This study presents the results of five regions in South Korea: Chungnam, Gyeonggi, Gyeongnam, Jeonbuk, and Seoul. The survey was conducted in three waves from May to June 2010 with a large-scale panel of 600 respondents who represented the five regions' gender, age, and education proportions. The study analyzed factors that influence the formation and change of voter preferences through three broad theoretical frameworks: (1) The sociological model that explains voter preference as a reflection of major social fragmentation (education, gender, income, religion, region, etc.); (2) The psychological model of the Michigan School that explains voter preference formation and change as activation of party identification in United States or Western elections, and regional identification in Korea as a proxy; (3) The rational voter model that posits that individuals, after calculating their own interests, support candidates or parties that possess the policies and ideology to maximize those interests. The South Korean Election Panel studies utilize "tracking core questions": questions that repeatedly track the change in vote determinants. These questions focus on attitudes on candidate factors, political party factors, election campaigns, issues, and policies. In this study, respondents were asked about the local election, their voting behavior, attitudes about political parties, which candidate they voted for in the 2006, 2007, and 2008 elections, exposure to media, major issues in the country, and the Lee Myung-bak administration. Economic questions asked about the living conditions of the respondent's residing city, how this compared to other cities, the respondent's household condition, and the economic situation of the country. Questions were also asked about the performance of President Lee Myung-bak and the respondent's local Governor/Mayor. Demographic variables include gender, age, occupation, religion, level of education, perceived social class, home ownership, and income.

Citation

East Asia Institute (South Korea), Seoul Broadcasting System (South Korea), JoongAng llbo (South Korea), and Hankook Research Company (South Korea). South Korean Local Election Panel Study: Regional Three Waves, 2010. Ann Arbor, MI: Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research [distributor], 2013-12-05. https://doi.org/10.3886/ICPSR34350.v1

Smallest Geographic Unit

Time Period(s)

Date of Collection

Data Collection Notes

For additional information on the South Korean Election studies please visit the
East Asia Institute Web site.

Whenever possible, the questionnaire used the wording of international surveys, such as the ANES questionnaire, to allow international comparisons. When no appropriate questions existed, new question items were developed.

Sample

The panel study sample was selected using stratified random sampling in each region. The data for setting the quotas were determined from the Resident Registration data as of December 31, 2009, published by the Ministry of Government Administration and Home Affairs, with the quotas set according to demographic proportions by age, by gender, and by region. The sample was allocated by crossing the proportions of each region (the 16 metropolitan self-governing bodies), gender (male/female), and age group (29 years of age and under, 30-39 years of age, 40-49 years of age, 50 years of age and over). The quotas were applied separately to each sample group from the master sample, which is specially gathered and operated by the Hankook Research Company and from the newly selected sample.

Universe

All individuals over the age of 19 who were eligible to vote in South Korea.

Unit(s) of Observation

individual

Data Type(s)

survey data

Mode of Data Collection

computer-assisted telephone interview (CATI)

Response Rates

Original Release Date

2013-12-05

Version Date

2013-12-05

Version History

2013-12-05 ICPSR data undergo a confidentiality review and are altered when necessary to limit the risk of disclosure. ICPSR also routinely creates ready-to-go data files along with setups in the major statistical software formats as well as standard codebooks to accompany the data. In addition to these procedures, ICPSR performed the following processing steps for this data collection: